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its bonds at Kalabag, the waters spread like a sea over the surrounding * 
country, until at Dera Ismail Khan the eye can with difficulty discern the 
farther shore. In the winter all this is changed ; nowhere does the current 
exceed three miles an hour ; while the breadth, often less than a furlong, 
permits of pontoon bridges being thrown from bank to bank at more spots 
than one. 
The Indus is the longest river of India, being 1,800 miles in length, and, 
after receiving the other rivers of the Punjab, debouches by many mouths 
into the Arabian Sea. The Ganges, the next in magnitude, is 1 ,500 miles in 
length, having its turbid volume swollen at Allahabad by the blue waters 
of the Jumna, and falls into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganges, like the 
Indus and the smaller rivers of India, is liable to enormous expansion during 
the season of inundation. 
The Sutlej and other rivers of the Punjab are not only liable to overflow 
their banks, but are continually trying to change the channels in which they 
are flowing, either seeking their ancient beds or making new ones for their 
tortuous and impetuous floods. 
Messrs. Brassey & Co., when building the Sutlej Bridge for the Delhi 
Railway in 1869, required to add some twenty additional spans of 102 feet 
each to provide for the alteration in the river’s course, which appeared to be 
imminent. 
The Mulleer Viaduct in Scinde was 1,800 feet long, in twenty-one spans 
of 80 feet each, built on stone piers, each pier consisting of two upright pillars, 
sufficient only for a single line. The foundations were of three kinds : the 
foundations of the two piers first built, Nos. 3 and 4, being in cofferdams, 
and sufficiently large for a pier to carry the double line ; Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 
and 8 are built in brick wells, and the others were intended to be the same ; 
but, the foundations not being sufficiently good, piles were driven in the 
wells, and the interstices filled in with concrete, the piers being built on 
this. 
Two rivers meet the Mulleer above the viaduct, — the Dumb about half a 
mile above, and the Sookham, quite close to the bridge. The sources of 
these streams are widely separated, and it would appear, on the morning 
when the viaduct was carried away, that the streams were discharging 
themselves at different levels, causing great turbulence in the water passing 
under the viaduct. 
At daybreak, on the morning of the disaster, there was little or no water 
visible in the bed of the river, and at eight a.m. it had almost reached rail 
level. At nine a.m. the bridge was carried away. The water came down in 
a succession of bores, — the largest of which, bringing down with it the 
ruins of a village about a mile and a half up the river, came down with 
immense force, rising above the level of the rails, and carrying away eleven 
spans of girders, with their piers, as if they had been straws. Some of the 
girders were found within a few feet of the bridge ; but two of them were 
at least half a mile down the stream. Each span, with rails, &c., would 
weigh about 60 tons. 
VOL. XV. 
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